Track Premiere: Laura Zarougian: “Back To Me”

Are you ready, dear loyal listener, to hear a new voice that we guarantee you that you’re going to love?  Laura Zarougian’s sound is rather special – she grew up on the coast of the Atlantic but the sounds spinning around her head were a mixture of sixties and seventies folk legends and the Armenian folk songs that her grandparents passed down to her.  Blending them together has given Zarougian a personal subgenre of her own: “I call the genre ‘Armenian Cowgirl’ because the themes are often about the stories of my ancestors, through my own interpretation of the American music I love” she says.

Added into this mix is Laura Zarougian’s actual voice which shimmers like clear waters cascading down to the sea, at turns drifting from a high to a lower register as a song swirls dazzlingly on its way.  Her new album is ‘Nayri‘, and the New York based musician has given us the opportunity to share the vibrant ‘Back to Me‘ in advance of the album’s release on August 4th.

Laura Zarougian told Americana UK about the feeling that ‘Back To Me‘ captures: “People come back into our lives unexpectedly – we can look to the past, try to piece it together – but like many things, sense can’t always be made of paper puzzles.”

Laura Zarougian’s path to exploring music reflects a wandering soul, after graduation, not quite sure where she belonged, she packed up her bags and boots, and headed to the mountains of her grandparents. Armenia was in some part home, the land where the songs and lullabies came from, but in large part wildly unfamiliar. She moved from the capital city of Yerevan to Gyumri, home of the mystic Gurdjieff, where she studied Armenian folk songs and singing from a member of the choral group Kohar.  Then, having relocated to Chicago, on a particularly cold, bleak, and downright lonesome Valentine’s Day, Zarougian walked two miles to the Chicago Music Exchange and bought herself an acoustic guitar, only vaguely aware of what to do with the instrument (having taken lute lessons as a middle schooler).  She signed up for classes at the Old Town School of Folk Music, started writing songs and…relocated to Boston to teach art. While in Boston, she performed almost obsessively at open mics throughout town, multiple times a week. After a couple years, she moved to Brooklyn and moved from performing at open mics, to eventually hosting open mics; putting together bands and filling bills around the city.   And now recording an album –  another musical gift from the pandemic.